


The Kings In The Mountains

by Seika



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Mass Effect, Mythology - Fandom
Genre: Action, Crossover, King In The Mountain Legends - Freeform, Noble Phantasms go BOOM!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seika/pseuds/Seika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus; Slung atween the roundshot, listening for the drum; der Quintes kommt.</p>
<p>The Reapers have come. Earth is burning. But now her old defenders wake, and the heroes of ages past are finding themselves new monsters to slay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Kings In The Mountains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was first posted as a couple of separate chapters, covering the prologue section and the Ireland section. After posting it in full elsewhere, I decided it worked better as a long one-shot. We'll see if I'm wrong yet again. Anyway, I kept the old chapters by themselves, as well as in their proper places within the full piece one-shot, so all your kind words have been preserved. If you want to skip to the newer parts, search up 'high summer'.
> 
> Various things belong to various people. EA and BioWare get Mass Effect and various associated concepts; Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon get Fate/Stay Night and other concepts. World mythology belongs to nobody, and sod you all if you want to take it away. I get most of the actual writing, but that's pretty worthless when other people own so much of what underpins it (and I owe them a debt for that).

Humanity is, to all intents and purposes, a rather unspectacular strain of life. They do not think so quickly as the salarians, nor do they acquire the long-lived wisdom of the asari. They have none of the durability of turians, the krogan or the vorcha. Any batarian or elcor can crush a human's skull with a blow. Their memory is astoundingly inferior to that of the drell, and they cannot match the beautiful bioluminescence of the hanar. Frankly, humans aren't good for much. Middle of the road in almost every way, never visibly excelling.  
  
A scientist, if called upon to show some enthusiasm for the humans, will likely babble on about their extraordinary genetic diversity. And it's true that humans come in a rather incredible array of colours, palest white to midnight black, that their eyes have dozens of shades to them, even that they are extraordinarily varied in their sexualities compared to other species. But this (though it skims the truth for an instant as a stone skips over water) is a detail, a curiosity. Humanity's variety would not make up for its weakness, and we must plunge further on.  
  
If you ask some average person, wandering the Wards, they are actually more likely to pick up on their hair. Uncovered hair on an intelligent species is rather a novelty to the longer-established civilisations, and the wonder has still not worn off. Partners to aliens are known to have been trapped for hours with a lover who simply strokes and strokes their hair, learning colour, texture, length. (Amongst other things, this means hair is beginning to become symbol of romantic interest, inside and outside human space. Show yours off and fling it about to show that you're available; brush theirs with a hand to show you'd like to take up the offer).  
  
A historian might perhaps get closer to the truth. Humanity, it will be noted, have expanded far more rapidly than any other recorded civilisation. They were pressed into war on their very first contact with an alien species (and for all that the Hierarchy records it as an 'Incident', the idea of the 'First Contact _War_ ' is far more pervasive in historical and popular discussion). They went up against the _turian_ military machine – even a small part of it – and came out of it with a creditable draw. They made outstanding contributions to tactics, to new ship designs. They have won themselves a seat on the Council more quickly than anyone thought possible.  
  
But the facts of history will not tell you the truth. At least, not all of it. Humanity has been vastly more successful than it has any right to be, but that does not get at the _why_ of it, not the root. There is an extraordinary _drive_ there. Krogans are bloody-minded to be sure (and can afford to be, even as more and more are born without full redundant systems), but they lack _purpose_ in their stubborn nature. For that reason, they die the genophage's slow and lingering death, not only as their numbers dwindle with each warrior dead and each stillborn clutch, but also as they degrade themselves into feuding brutes. Brutes who forget the glory of their ancestors and will not stoop to curing their species' quiet death even as they rage about it to all who would hear.  
  
And so the utter determination of humanity, gives them something no other species has. Something no species has ever had, according to the thousand cycle-long data banks of the Eldest, ancient Harbinger. It gives them Alaya. The great unconscious embodiment of human _will_. Alaya processes the belief and conviction of humanity. It shapes the gods. It elevates legends to be recorded in the Root, the Spiral of Origin, Void, 「」, _siari_ , the fabric of the universe itself, whatever word or symbol or phrase you try to dedicate to that enormous, inexpressible concept.  
  
But the gods left two thousand years ago, with all the other beasts of fantasy and legend, leaving humans to their Age of Man, the age of Technology. Scraps of their presence remain – an old sword, handed down through the clan's generations; the religions who were too stubborn to die when their heads were cut off and their feet shattered; a few families in which the bloodline was preserved and who are stronger or quicker than humans really should be (this, O learned scientist, even if you will get no proof, is where humanity's genetic diversity comes from – the inhuman constructs of human faith). Yet, they are only scraps. The gods have no place in the normal life of humanity any more, and humanity dwindles, invention after invention compensating as godsblood thins and the old, testing wilds are tamed.  
  
Alaya's role, then, is more subtle in this day and age. The gods are gone and humanity relies too much on technology over personal strength for people to ever become true legends again. Occasionally, it will draw the attention of ancient heroes, the great unconscious calling the past to defend the present. But mostly it is nudges in the mind and manipulations and shadows, not the blowing horns of battle.  
  
The time for that subtlety is past now. Humanity is under threat as never before. _Alaya_ is under threat. For all that humans have made a hundred other planets homes, Earth is still the homeworld, the centre of its self-identity. If it were to fall … Alaya might not survive. Insofar as an extension of unconsciousness can be afraid, it is _terrified_. It is not a screaming panic – that is the realm of the conscious – but all those uncontrolled signs of fear. A trembling in the hands, a shivering, a pacing to-and-fro. All multiplied eight billion times over as the Reaper horns shake the land and their crimson streams of metal carelessly gut humanity's ships.  
  
It _might_ be stopped. A faint hope, but there, a single shooting star upon which all Earth's children can wish. As the Reapers' initial attack brings panic and terror, people falls back on the old superstitions and traditions. They grasp at straws, but that is enough. The King Under The Mountain. The Captain In His Hammock, A Thousand Mile Away. The Once And Future King. A hundred million despairing prayers soar, filled with belief. And the desperate sincerity is itself what means those prayers can be answered.  
  
Their contracts are answered. Their vows fulfilled. Their legends reborn.  
  
Charlemagne walks out of his mountain cave. He is in his prime, golden hair flowing down his shoulders, and the golden sword, Joyeuse, at his side.  
  
Barbarossa stands tall again, brushing burial-earth away from massive shoulders and bright red beard. The Holy Roman Empire is no more, but its Emperors rise once again.  
  
As a distant drumbeat sounds, by Plymouth a massive fleet of galleons rises out of the water, and the _Golden Hind_ is at their head.  
  
At the third cry of their horn, the cave entrance cracks open at last. First to march out is Fionn, old Ireland's saviour. And behind him are assembled the Fianna - Diarmuid and Oisin and Oengus and all the others - ready to protect the Emerald Isle once more.  
  
Deep within the corridors of Kronborg Castle, the old statue shudders and then seems to fill with colour and texture and _life_ until King Holger the Dane stands tall once more. And in his hand is Curtana, sister to Joyeuse and Durandal.  
  
Near Athens, Theseus strides from the sea, his father's ancient kingdom. Just as at Marathon he came forth to sweep the Persians before him and the army of his countrymen, so he has returned again for his city's sake.  
  
And though he never died, the call sounds loudly to another too. From the faery realms steps the healed Arthur, ageless ever since he took the scabbard of Excalibur, and so young that he seems a maiden girl at first sight.  
  
But it is not only these legends who are realised now. Alaya's plea has no hold on them save the common bond of humanity, but few indeed are the heroes who would abandon their species, their planet, or a damned good fight. The path to the Throne of Heroes has been forced wide open, and the best that Earth has ever had to offer comes pouring out.

 

* * *

 

So it is that Cú Chulainn and his old comrade meet once again on Ulster's green plains, a little way outside Belfast's sprawl. Fergus mac Roích offers his nephew a fierce smile, and has it returned with added bloodlust. Then, in sync with each other as only family or warriors who have depended on each other in battle's crush can be – and these two fit both categories – they turn to watch the four monstrous machines stalking over the city.  
  
“Big buggers,” is Fergus' deliberately unimpressed observation.  
  
“That they are.” Culann's Hound is less practised at feigning diffidence, and his eagerness to see how well the metal constructs will _die_ seeps through. Fergus's smile broadens for a second, amused at the constancy of his relative's willingness for battle. “And I'm taking first shot at them.”  
  
“Your spear's good, kid. It's not _that_ good.” Fergus would back his foster-son against thousands of men – has _seen_ him live up to those expectations, but these invaders require more than skill and strength. “Not reckoning they've got hearts for you to destroy. Your witch's tricks aren't so helpful against these bloody things.”  
  
“Maybe so, maybe so.” Prideful little bastard. The boy obviously has something up his sleeve, and he's enjoying defying Fergus' expectations. “But my spear _and_ the old runes I learnt from the witch? That'll do it.”  
  
Fergus frowns. He's had his own army held back by those runes before, and the spear's not to be underestimated but still …  
  
Cú Chulainn is entirely unbothered by his uncle's silence and is already scratching runes into the ground. He has speed born of practice, learned under the harsh tutelage as a boy in the Land of Shadows and refined in Ireland's constant raids. Two circles of runestones now surround them. The tight inner one is complete, eighteen markings already drawing in power to feed his spear. The outer one is missing its last, held in his hand for the necessary moment.  
  
“This is going to take some power, Fergus. Watch 'em for me.”  
  
Fergus nods and turns his gaze towards the colossi wreaking havoc in Belfast. Even if his nephew's likely over-reaching himself, he's not going to insult him by interfering. Family and warriors together – the code is clear. Neither of them would so pain the other's pride.  
  
Cú Chulainn eyes the inner circle with an unusually considered glance, waits a few seconds longer, and _leaps_. Thirty feet he jumps into the air, spear held ready to throw. And as he rises, the runes begin to shine. From the first, directly facing the sun, and then around the circle as the sun would travel. Dipping down into the west, circling through south and rising again in the east until it reaches the first stone in the north. When each lights, it sends a streamer of white into the air, spiralling upwards and curling around Cú Chulainn's red spear until it seems that he has not leapt, but merely stands on a tree made from light. And in his hand he holds not a lance, but a ray of the sun itself.  
  
And then Ireland's Son of Light lets his missile fly.  
  
Like light it seems, and like light it travels. In half an instant, it has torn through the air and slammed into a Reaper. Magic and ancient power contend with high-density steel compounds and metals never known to humanity. The gods' spears could not break it: not Lugh's Brionac, called the Five Thundering Stars, nor Odin's Gungnir, called the Declaration Of The Elder God.  
  
But the immortal gods have run to the hidden places of the world. Men, dying but always changing and adapting and bettering themselves, remain. And Cú Chulainn has bettered the gods with his spear.  
  
It tears through the Reaper, leaving a gaping hole in it as if a giant fist had smashed through the Old Machine. The metal corpse remains upright for a few seconds, until power to its legs gives out and it falls like a landslide. So dies the first Reaper on Earth, to a spear and to a system of writing that had made do with stone because its civilisation had not yet created paper.  
  
For a split second, all is still, in recognition of this insanity (though it is a powerful madness, which all men create and which possesses all men). For a mortal army, the shattering of invulnerability would have caused a much longer pause, perhaps even a rout. But the Old Machines have no use for morale. It is a weakness of the Unascended, to be used and broken mercilessly, but it is not _theirs._ So a shift, a slight glow from one of the remaining monsters is all the warning Fergus gets.  
  
“ 'Ware!” he barks and his nephew, even as he falls back to earth, flicks the final runestone into its place. The Reaper's crimson blast is held back by an invisible barrier, wasting itself on thin air. But even Cú Chulainn's mastery of runes is challenged by the alien power. His carved stones glowed at first, but now they blaze like white fire.  
  
And then one cracks, its light flickering.  
  
“Shit!” Fergus grabs his panting foster-son and dives to the side, just before scarlet metal carves through the bounded field, through the space where they had stood, and through the landscape behind them, painting the fields with a white scar of slag, quickly cooling to black.  
  
The Reapers turn away again, having to give their attention to the renewed series of attacks within Belfast, perhaps inspired by the first giant's fall. All those who Ascended into processes of each machine Nation concur that even in the vastly improbable event that the two survived, they must have been unable to carry away a weapon of the necessary mass to reproduce that anomaly. Even conceding the absurd possibility that millions upon millions of years of science can be surpassed by primates who have discovered _writing_ barely five thousand years ago, priority must be given to the city's attacks. They are certain to cause damage – the two unknown figures should not even be alive.  
  
The Irishmen untangle themselves from each other quickly. Lives of war ensure that – even when battle knocks you down hard, you stand back up. For pride's sake, and for the sake of not getting stabbed in the throat whilst you're helpless. A quick glance confirms that the Reapers' threat to them is gone … for a time.  
  
“Well then, Hound,” Fergus says. “You had your turn – mine now.” He is slower to rouse than his son, but his warlust is no less fierce for that. He reaches down to his side and draws his sword from its scabbard. It seems large, even for Fergus, and clumsily proportioned. Worse yet, it is made of wood, soft and pale. No-one could believe that this was a hero's blade.  
  
“My core is twisted into madness!” So proclaims Fergus, and the wood falls away to show the true sword. It is his father's – Léte's Sword. It is his goddess' – the Badb's Swift Messenger. It is the Harshblade. It is Caladbolg. A spiral of sharp-edged steel, still oddly shaped but now seeming to _fit_ with Fergus.  
  
Cú Chulainn frowns for a second. “I've seen that. Not just when I was alive, with you, but since I came to the Throne. But … I haven't seen _you_.” His questioning tone (made more hesitant as he struggles to match up the half-memories one acquires in the Throne's space, kept outside of time's reach) is well warranted. No hero could make proper use of another's treasure – it is only by taking and making it your own that you become worthy of immortality in the Throne of Heroes – and only one such could have met and battled Cú Chulainn.  
  
Fergus snorts and dismisses the riddle. “It's time to remind you of the real bloody thing then! Last time you saw _me_ with this blade, I gave the Máela Midi their names – the three Scalped Hills of Meath.” The bared-teeth grin is back, full of blood-lust. “And I'm reckoning these bastards are smaller than they were.”  
  
Fergus crosses his right hand over his body, so that Caladbolg points out to his left. Then he snaps it around in a half-circle until his arm is straightened out to the right. The sword's tip traces a line in the air which distorts all the light that passes through it, breaking it into prismatic shards of colour – a rainbow in miniature.  
  
Then, “Caladbolg!” The line rushes outward, racing towards the skyline of Belfast, racing towards the Reapers that stand over it. And it hits.  
  
Before, it was a war of power: kinetic energy matched against the toughness of armour. The Spiral Sword is not so straight-forward. It twists space without regard for what it holds within it – in the past, it tore apart men and shields and weapons and land all the same. Now it rends the Reapers, warping their armour, crushing their shells, tearing their insides. The Reapers can face power – have seen desperate Unascended build futile weapons which harnessed immense and absurd amounts of energy, beyond even what the Reapers employed. And the nations who Ascended from those children recall creating such things in fear and ignorance before enlightenment came to them. But this is _concept_ , imposition of the abstract onto reality. It is something against which the Old Machines have no defence.  
  
Two sounds ring out over Belfast, jarring painfully against one another. The first is the deep horns of the Reapers, far louder than before, as if they at last remember panic. Or death. The second is much higher – the wrenching sound of metal twisted beyond its limits and torn apart. A Reaper falls; the distortion has cut straight through its core and nothing remains of the old nation who inhabited the great mechanical war-shell. A second collapses; its core had been missed, but its power was gone, and so an accord of millions fell silent. The third stays – it too has been shorn in two, but its core is whole, and enough systems remain intact. Not to survive – it too will be lost within the minute – but to relay a desperate message to its kin. _Humanity brings an unknown power against the Ascended. Beware, beware!_ The signal cycles out once, and has to let a painful lapse of seconds pass: that is the limit without instantly annihilating the cooling systems or overwhelming the transmitters. The second cycle at last goes. Then the third nation slumps, falls into the dust of its unconquered city and dies.  
  
But the Reapers elsewhere are already finding out that humanity has surprises for them.

 

* * *

 

Always in Avalon it is high summer – the time of Vivian, Lady of the Lake. Unripe, yellow wheat stands high between the hedgerows of apple trees and the sun shines down from an unclouded sky, making the water glare white with its reflection. And here the young queen Artoria rests, healing away her wounds and waiting for Britain's time of need.  
  
It is that time.  
  
In Avalon, a way opens. It has no frame, nor hinges, nor a door to cover it but it is a opening to Old Britain. When it forms, Artoria is by one of Avalon's many lakes, sitting with her toes dipped in the water. This is where her final wound is – a spear that stabbed through her foot, pinning her to the earth for vital moments at Camlann. But as the way appears and a colder wind blows through Summer's country, the bleeding ends and the flesh seals.  
  
It is that time.  
  
Artoria smiles – her duty is joyously taken now – and picks herself up. She strides out onto the water's surface, to the centre. Just as it did once before, an arm extends from the lake, and the Last Phantasm is held in it. Excalibur: the wishes of humanity crystallised into truth in the core of the planet; the golden sword given to the fairies' safekeeping until humanity needs its dreams made reality once more.  
  
It is that time.  
  
“I thank you, Vivian,” she says, bowing slightly towards the arm. “I swear once again that your treasure will be returned.”  
  
“This is why Excalibur exists, beautiful Artoria,” whispers the summer breeze over the lake. “It was made to be wielded in such times when all your people were threatened. And though we no longer live there, we have not forgotten our land. We made it as the fortress of Nature, set apart from infection and the hand of war, and wrapped it in mist to hide it. Though Man came, and we left, we love our creation still. And these damned things which assault it, who have neither land nor life, they are anathema in the World's eyes. You and all that go with you will have the blessing of the Lake so long as our power lasts. Destroy the Unworlded, and I will never hold a debt against you, until life's end.”  
  
So she bows again, more deeply. She takes the sword. She wraps magic around her, and forms it into armour. She brushes aside the wheat, and she walks through the doorway.  
  
It is that time.  


***  
  
When she emerges into the human plane, it is in a tunnel of rock, echoing with the sound of waves and lit by streams of light coming from a cracked and dripping roof. Dimly, she can make out a widening before her, where the tunnel must open out into a cave proper. As she moves towards that cave, her armoured foot nudges something on the ground. It chimes, and she just catches the sound of dull groans from ahead of her.  
  
“Ahhh ...” She knows this place, and she knows its purpose. Taking care not to sound the small bell her foot knocked, she picks it up and walks forward into the cavern. Though the gaps in the roof here are no bigger or more numerous than in the tunnel, it seems somehow better lit, and she can see what she had hoped would be there.  
  
An enormous table, perfectly circular in shape, directly in the middle of the cave. Seated around it sleep her knights, whose wounds have slowly healed just as hers did. Their rest is vigilant, each dressed in his armour and each with his right hand on his sword. Their armaments are what illuminate the cave – polished steel reflecting light all around. But, unlike her, they slept the dead sleep of ages, and the call did not rouse them. They are hers alone to wake.  
  
So she takes her place in the lone empty chair and strikes the bell. Lowly, tiredly, they groan the question it demands of them once again.  
  
“Is it time?”  
  
They have been bothered by unwary thieves, unsuspecting travellers, curious myth-seekers for fifteen hundred years. Not daring to wake the mysterious warriors, each has said, “It is not time. Sleep again.” But at last the bell rings truly.  
  
“It is that time, knights! It _is_ that time! Time to wake, time to march, time to war! Britain begs you and your king demands of you – get up and fight!”  
  
It is the voice which led them to ten victorious battles and drove away the Saxons. It is the voice of their king. Not one disobeys. To her left, Lancelot's eyes flutter open – to her right, Gawain. Then Bedivere, Percival, Bors, Ector, Kay, Llenlleawg, Agravain, Sagramor, Tristain, Culhwch and all the rest, the thousand knights of the Round Table.  
  
Lancelot speaks first, “My king …” He falls to his knees, and then flings his whole body down at her feet. “I ...” A sob wrenches itself from his throat, but he's still trying to mouth his apology even as his words are swallowed up by the tears.  
  
“No, Lancelot.” She wonders if she should make that a rejection of the false 'king' as much as of his apology. Make herself anew, without the cold barrier of deceit she brought between herself and her knights. No, they know Arthur the warrior-king, not Artoria (does _she_ know who Queen Artoria might be, herself?). There's no room for doubt or questions, not at this time. “I have seen your grief, and the madness you drove yourself to. I could not punish you for doubting me, and if I had hated you, I could demand no worse punishment than what you gave yourself.” Gently, she raises him back to his feet, and holds him there until she thinks he won't throw himself down again.  
  
Her champion steadied, she raises her voice, so all the knights can hear its high sound once again, the tone of the immortal youth who once ruled them. “This is a new time. But it is _our_ time, just as much as the one we left. Britain still stands; Britain still remembers us. And, as it was when we all first came together and won our highest glory, she _needs_ us. We all love our country, and we all know war in the marrow of our bones. That will be enough, whatever happened in times which are now long gone. Let us march, Knights! For Britain!”  
  
They cheer, cheer that they have so clear a purpose once again. Cheer that they no longer have to worry about an inhuman king and who is for or against him. They cheer _Arthur_. And when their resolve is united, the cave has fulfilled the purpose humanity gave it. The walls split, rocks tumble, and the evening sunlight pours in.  


***  
  
“We go south first.” She's giving orders again – an old feeling, but still comfortable. Perhaps more comfortable now than it was before, somehow. “Over the waves, to Ynys Enlli. One more to wake before we go.”  
  
“One more, my king?” Boyish Percival pipes up, his voice nearly as high as hers. They were the two golden-haired younglings of Camelot, though if their similarities had ended there. Where her youth spoke of divine favour and power, he had been mocked for being a stripling lad, not old enough to squire, let alone be a knight. Where hers was eternal, he had grown into broad shoulders and strong arms, even if he kept his child's innocence. And where hers had made her alien, a symbol instead of a person, he had worn down the older warriors with sheer cheerfulness (and a couple of well-timed duels, granted) until he had been one of her court's most popular knights.  
  
“Yes, Percival. A man was confined all the time you slept and it is time to release him from his prison.”  
  
“ _Oh!_ … Do we have to, lord Arthur? I mean, well -” he says with an impish smile.  
  
Her lips twitch, and he blinks in surprise – that his stone-cold king understood his humour, or that she could actually find it amusing? “He's an irredeemable fool? Indeed. But a wise man too, one whom we need. And he was there at the beginning of this all, when I first took the sword from its stone. He should be here now as well, to see Camelot's second birth.”  
  
“I didn't _really_ mean we should -”  
  
“I know, Percival, I know. No need to explain yourself.” But she's getting caught up in everything, all the old comrades, and all the new emotions she can express – and yet she must be slow and careful about them. She doesn't have to be the cold king any more, but war still demands that she keep ice's clarity, if not its chill. Perhaps when the fight is done, she and her friends can … she cuts her thoughts and the conversation short. “Enough waiting! Come, let's be off!”  
  
So the thousand knights of Camelot march on the waves with fairy-blessed steps to Ynys Enlli, the Tidebound Isle.  
  
There they find an apple tree, the single one of its type in all the world, taken from Avalon's Isle of Apples to be planted in the mortal realm. It clings to the hillside above a cave, and that cave is where Merlin has lain imprisoned by glass for the last fifteen hundred years.  


***  
  
Approaching his transparent coffin, she can see Merlin's lips moving, as if he's holding a conversation in the isolation of his prison. A spell perhaps, one meant to shatter the glass and free himself? Has he somehow heard of these new invaders, already begun preparing himself for battle?  
  
But when she tosses aside the lid, she is not treated to gathering magical forces and words of power. Instead, Merlin is holding a rapid-fire debate with himself on the nature of passion. As he chatters on, apparently oblivious to his freedom, a smile crosses her lips for a second. Hadn't she said _but knowing that old man, I am sure he is still casually talking about love_? Then she raps firmly on the side of the coffin with her gauntlets. He looks up.  
  
“Oh. Hello, Arthur. Took your time, didn't you?”  
  
She gives him a level stare.  
  
“Right, right, fine. Youngsters haven't got any patience these days. Sad, very sad.” He picks himself up out of the coffin and stares at it in distaste. “You know how boring it got in there, Arthur? No, no you don't. _You_ got to sit in fairyland with all the pretty girls. Bet you had fun there. All the while your poor, ancient teacher gets shut in a glass box he can't even see out of. How is that fair? Bloody witches ...”  
  
Ignoring his implications of fairy … debauchery, she patiently waits for his muttered monologue (seemingly directed more at the coffin than her) to end. The day when Merlin would weary of his own voice has still not dawned, apparently. And if fifteen hundred years just listening to himself ramble hadn't tired him of it, that time probably wasn't ever going to come.  
  
Merlin does stop eventually, though his eyes keep themselves fixed on his glass container. She's about to remind him that she is still there and bring him up to speed when his gaze hardens into a furious glare and he starts a rapid chant.  
  
“Belí's fire take you,  
Belí's fire twist you,  
Belí's fire melt you,  
Belí's fire unshape you!”  
  
From the floor of the cave, hands of flame rise to claw through Merlin's prison. As he repeats his spell, more and more appear, until the coffin is no longer visible for the inferno which grasps at it.  
  
When the fire at last dies back, the coffin lies melted in a pool. Merlin leans over it and touches a finger to the centre. Artoria winces: she felt the heat from where she stood and the glass pool still glows hot. But he seems unconcerned, and straightens back up. As he does so, a stream of red glass is drawn upwards with his finger until he has a thin trail of it reaching his eye level. Merlin mutters another verse and a second streamer is drawn up, curling around the first. Then a third, fourth and fifth. Eventually, the whole coffin has woven itself into a thick glass staff for the mage. He stamps it on the floor and all the colour, all the heat, seems just to fall out of it, shed like an old cloak.  
  
“There. This bound me and now I bind it. A fitting little revenge.” His voice has lost its normal amused edge. A rare occasion; she remembers this tone from only a few times in her life. The first time she'd heard it … when he'd seen a girl throw away all her feelings, all her _love_ , and resign herself to being hated so that her country could stumble on a few more gasping decades.  
  
“Well, enough of that. Come on, you got me up for a reason, Arthur. Old man needs his sleep, you know. What's this all about?”  
  
“The time we knew of has come: Britain's hour of greatest need. Vivian told me of invaders, anathema. She called them the Unworlded.”  
  
“Ohhh, did she?” Merlin almost looks serious for a second. It passes. “Well, you know fairies. Flighty, very flighty. They'll give a fancy name to anything they feel like.” He sighs theatrically. “Come on then, I'm sick of this damn cave. Let's go - I assume the rest are with you?”  
  
“All of them, yes. Come and see.”  
  
They both duck to exit the cave, Merlin following Artoria. She looks back, and notes that the mage is being uncharacteristically unsentimental. By which she means he is only kissing the earth to celebrate his release into fresh air, instead of actually trying to eat it. Eventually he recovers and bothers to acknowledge that she still exists, and that hundreds of knights behind her are watching with amusement.  
  
“All together again, eh? The best of Camelot, to make a new kingdom for Arthur -”  
  
“No! No, Merlin. Perhaps Britain's _dux bellorum_ , as the Romans would have had it, but not _rex_. That time has passed and we saw what came of it.” Artoria speaks lowly, but with a certainty she didn't know she had about her position up until that very second.  
  
Merlin fixes his gaze on her and a smile slowly creeps onto his face. “A mere warlord instead of a king, hm? _Well_. You have changed, Arthur. Changed indeed, in the eternal land ...”  
  
Shaking his musing off, he turns back to her assembled knights, and his secretive little smile broadens into a full grin. “All right then, boys! Time to walk the worlds!”  
  
“Walk the worlds, Lord Merlin?” Sir Derfel asks. He was Merlin's guardian knight, who had made this island his home when his beloved old teacher had been imprisoned. She heard before Camlann that even Mordred's soldiers hadn't been able to drive him away, were slaughtered in their boats by his might. It had given them all hope: one of the Round Table who would survive no matter how their desperate battle turned out, a good and loyal knight.  
  
“Yes, yes, keep up! I can't jump us around _here_ , but I can drop into any other world anywhere I like. So we take a stroll over there, and then I open the way back just outside old London. Simple enough, even your little brain should get it.”  
  
“Yes, lord,” replies Derfel, with all the love and patience that long association with the mad, old trickster has bred into him.  
  
“Right, just a second.” Merlin makes a gesture and thumps his staff on the ground. The wind suddenly picks up, ready to carry his words to the whole British host. “There. Now I don't need to shout at you lot any more. Poor old man, don't want to wear out my voice, you know how it is.” He waits for the ensuing murmur of laughter to pass before continuing. “So, everyone, the door'll appear in front of us. All you need to do is walk through. Couldn't be simpler! On three. One. Two. Three!”  
  
Then, of course, he opens it beneath their feet.  
  
They fall. They fall through sky, an alien sky of gold mist and red clouds. An alien sky for an alien world which turns below, streams of obsidian rock flowing over white fields. A world which is quickly coming up to meet them: fast, too fast, going to hit it -  
  
They fall through _another_ portal.  
  
For how quickly they had been dropping, they land strangely softly. Even so, the knights are jarred, some winded and some just panting for air. But none of them are so hurt that they cannot glare furiously at Merlin. He smiles blithely.  
  
“There we go. Ought to have your blood up now, boys.” Artoria returns for a second to the old question of whether Merlin uses that address so often to tease her for her secret or just because he likes to belittle everyone else. “Go on, have fun swinging your little swords around. I'll just watch.”  
  
Artoria sighs as he wanders off, leaning on his staff heavily enough that she can believe he needs it for once. And, in all fairness, moving a thousand knights through the walls of the universe and back could hardly _not_ tax him, however powerful he is.  
  
Time to plan, then. Britain's modern capital was hit early and hard, she judges. The square which all her knights have suddenly been crammed into is as much rubble as pavement: a tall column in the centre has snapped and fallen, though the lions at its feet still keep their watchful guard. She walks over to them, stands on one of their platforms. All around, towering buildings have been brought low and the huge invaders, their weaponry still carving apart the city, are the highest things in sight. On the horizon beyond them is the same evening sun which had greeted everyone so warmly when her knights left their Anglesey cave. But it now paints enormous metal shells in a dull, menacing red, echoing the glare of the fires they have sparked all through London.  
  
For a moment, her teeth clench and her eyes narrow. But anger is one of those emotions she's never thought well of, as king or before. It clouds her judgement and when facing down these monstrosities, Vivian's Unworlded, she cannot afford that. She briefly strokes the lion at her side, running her fingers over its smooth, metal surface in soothing motions. Britain still holds these beasts dear; from Camelot then to London now, some things were remembered. Enough. To work.  
  
She calls the knights together around her impromptu speaking platform and scans the crowd. Picking one out, she beckons for him to join her. “Gawain, is there still enough light?”  
  
“Galatine and I will make it be enough, sire.” He's smiling like so many of the others have been since their awakening and their lord's return, but it's edged with a hard determination. Whatever the strain it might put on him, he'd no more fail his king than he'd stand by while Britain fell.  
  
“Well said, friend,” she replies and gives him a nod. She looks down to another of her warriors. “Llenlleawg, if you'd come up here?”  
  
The little Irishman, ever-loyal, climbs up to stand by her and her lion. When he's on a level with Artoria, she holds out Excalibur to him and lets him run his fingers over it gently, tracing the steel.  
  
“Its wonder has not faded a bit. Thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart,” the mage-knight says, and nostalgia rushes through her. His admiration for her sword was never dulled in all the time he was at her court, and the same applies even now, centuries later. He pauses for a second, a frown of concentration setting itself firmly on his face. He takes a deep breath. “ _Be thou born!_ ”  
  
A flash, and he holds another Excalibur in his hands. Not a sister to hers, as Gawain's Galatine is, but a full twin in gold and blue and spiralling fairy letters. As there always was, there's a little intake of breath from the gathered warriors, only the sheer number of them making the sound audible at all.  
  
“It's beautiful, my knight – good work indeed. Use it well. Now, you both should stand ready,” she says. They give short bows in reply. “Kay ...”  
  
And so she directs each of the knights whose power she thinks might be sufficient to their targets; a dozen stalking horrors are picked out for destruction. Those whose speciality lies elsewhere have other assignments: Bedivere takes command of a detachment to gather and protect civilians; Derfel takes another to strike at their enemies' ground troops; the royal general Pellinore is the best to liaise with the modern fighters who are still keeping up a resistance; and Lancelot has left to appropriate some enormous modern weapon he spotted amidst wreckage in the river. (A remark from the back of her army that Lancelot's infamous 'subtlety' survived the ages well was met with grins all round). Artoria's war machine swings smoothly into action without waste or argument. Everyone understands the others, knows strengths and weaknesses, who they should cover for and who can cover them. As good as it had ever been before. _Better._  
  
Satisfied, she leaves her knights to their tasks and concentrates on the moment. Gawain is the first of the six standing to her right, and Llenlleawg the first of the six to her left, as she begins the count to London's first strike against the Unworlded. Three blazing Excaliburs are raised. Galatine's light is darker, having to gather up the evening sun. Llenlleawg's imitation glows a little paler than hers, unable to live up to the glory of its original. And between the two, Excalibur itself is radiant. Summer's blade shines like the sun at solstice.  
  
The swords are swung, their power unleashed. Day brighter than day dawns over London, and the Reapers die.

 

* * *

 

Tearing out of the desert where his city had been, on a flying adamant disc comes Gilgamesh, strongest of all the spirits Alaya has called. And the King of Heroes is _furious_.  
  
The prana making up his golden armour has gone wild, leaving his chest bare and his magical power flowing free. It stirs up the air around him into a shimmering heat-haze, as if the burning of his anger is so strong it warrants a physical presence. His revealed tattoos flare brightly, the same enraged crimson as his narrowed eyes.  
  
He sweeps through the cities of Mesopotamia, Noble Phantasms precisely chosen and targeted to exterminate the vermin that dare intrude on his property. One Reaper comes apart, dissolving into a landslide of rust, a billion specks of scrap falling onto Samawah as a spear plunges through the trespasser's centre. Another tears itself to pieces at the touch of a flint arrow – 'rejection of the alien' imposed onto its alien existence. This is the old, high magic, seen at civilisation's dawn and never since.  
  
He doesn't care to acknowledge the crawling, mewling, weak children who inhabit his lands now, and the swiftness of his journey would not admit the possibility even if he wanted to. But they acknowledge him, whether they see only a spear in the wreckage of a destroyed Reaper and cry out in praise to God, whose weapon it surely is, cast from heaven. Whether they spot the sand around ancient Uruk suddenly stirred up to mark the horizon and whisper to each other of the old kingdoms and heroes who lived long ago. Whether they catch a glimpse of their saviour himself – a flash of golden hair, a glance of red eyes as he speeds on past – and fall to worship his divine presence. But their awe, just like them, has no worth and Gilgamesh pays no mind.  
  
Eventually he is confronted, after a frantic conference among the Old Machines who had been terrorising Earth. They cannot have such a threat live, but nor can they afford to fight more like him without understanding what he does. How does he kill them, how do such minuscule weapons have such absurd effects, why did none of their information on humanity tell of a threat like this?  
  
A potential solution is found, a way to both pose their questions and be ready to make the kill. All around the world, dozens of Reapers lift off to gather in orbit. A fraction of the invading force, but the ignorant children of Earth cheer and clamour when they see its departure.  
  
And at their meeting point every Reaper does something wholly individual. They recreate their old selves, representatives of a hundred species who each dominated the galaxy in their turn. For the first time in millions of years, their genetic material is put to its proper use again. Cybernetic implants are activated and links opened to the subordinate avatars. A lone destroyer docks with each of the conclave, boarding a unique, new-birthed creature each time.  
  
When they are all stowed in its hull, the Reapers' ark updates its tracking data, plots its course and shoots through the sky. Its cargo disembarks, and soon an army of the possessed flies and walks and crawls and burrows toward Gilgamesh, demanding answers.  
  
He kills them all.  
  
It was not the one or two weapons their opponent summoned before, but a storm of blades, each given a target and hunting it down unerringly. Instant, simultaneous destruction.  
  
More data has been acquired.  
The danger increases but the value of extracting information does so with it.  
The Reapers are many, yet they would not throw away their selves needlessly.  
The harvest is reaped for the sake of preserving organic life: the loss of fifty thousand years of evolution and innovation is not to be treated lightly, even in the case that only a single Reaper would die to him.  
He has already destroyed several Reapers.  
This being represents an enormous level of potential; can he be thrown away?  
The cycle must be preserved, no matter what - life itself outweighs the consideration of one specimen from one species which has grown in one tiny span of years.  
The cycle must be preserved because it preserves life, but it is possible that life could be preserved in other ways; when such an extraordinary and unknown power is found, it should be investigated for the possibility of a new method.  
A new method is not certain.  
The cycle is known.  
  
In seconds, all Earth's Reapers have shared their data points and uploaded them to the conclave. Consensus has been achieved: destroy him. Destroy his chaos; uphold our order.  
  
But the King of Heroes – the first champion who transcended reincarnation itself to reach the Akashic Throne – is not a green soldier, to stand about idly in the middle of battle. A lens is summoned from his treasury and hovers over his eye as he peers into the sky. He sees them.  
  
“You! _You_ yourselves are the ones who come to conquer my kingdom? It has shattered, and my people have fallen and they have forgotten those golden times, but all this world is mine! And you think you will take it? Machines, tools? You think you can destroy even the pathetic fragments which are left of my realm?”  
  
Gilgamesh is spitting with fury, uncaring of any dignity lost in his outrage. The golden Gate which has been open at his back gapes wider and then contracts suddenly, leaving room for only a single weapon with a golden handle. The hero-king draws it; its revealed drill-like blade is deep red with brighter crimson trails crossing it. And it begins to spin.  
  
“Let me show you what tools _I_ have. Let me show you what submits to me!”  
  
The sword spins and wind rushes, whipping up dust and sand. Gilgamesh's nameless weapon sucks in the wind, compresses it into something _other_ , foreign to the very nature of the world as man has known it. But that is the least of what it can do and Gilgamesh has no interest in leashing his weapon for this battle. It would not be enough – not powerful enough, not _punishment_ enough.  
  
So he pours more magic in, the sword's glyphs and his tattoos flaring yet a brighter red together. Huge gouts of sand and dirt are caught up to whirl higher and father, darkening the sky. In the spinning clouds, charge gathers and lightning sparks, bright against the blackness. A desert storm has risen to watch the Star of Genesis reborn. But, in the eye, Gilgamesh thinks nothing of the side-effects to his fury. Over the howl of the wind and the flurrying sand, he bellows his curse at the Reapers.  
  
“You come for my kingdom's destruction? Then learn of _creation_! Learn of how Heaven and Earth were divided and Hell was sealed below! Learn it from the tool of the gods which was Creation itself! Learn this and die!”  
  
The wind screams hell. The stone-cutter of the Elder Gods is unsealed once more, though its masters have long since passed, and it now enacts its purpose. From the eye of the tempest comes a new storm, birthed within Ea's sword of severing. Unbound, it tears through the atmosphere and engulfs the whole Reaper conclave. And in the heart of that storm, the machines meet with truth.  
  
It is a stark one. It is a dead planet. Or, perhaps, beyond dead. Never has it had _being_ on itself, nor does it wish such to host such an abhorrence. If anything can be said to inhabit this place, it is a pitiless loathing for that with life, thought, motive force, Origin. Once, this was Earth, beyond and before time: nothing lived, nothing died. Nothing _was_.  
  
But then comes a dawn, bright in the distance - a racing storm-tide of air and water, lightning and sulphur. It screams across the face of the world, pouring down all the seeds of mortality. Below, there will soon be oceans. In them will grow tiny sparks, single living cells. And from those ancestors will eventually come an uncountable variety of plants and creatures and _life_. Covering the planet, this storm of Origin becomes a firmament to stand between Earth and Heaven, and a seal to bury barren Hell deep.  
  
They confront the land of the dead and the power that conquered it. And so the killers of trillions are undone by rawest Creation.

 

* * *

 

And so did the great heroes make war, smashing apart tens of metres of armour which had weathered eternities in space, whose construction was hundreds of millennia away for the most advanced species in the galaxy. Cores shredded or vaporised, the Old Machines died in numbers never seen before.  
  
But no less did those without such weapons fight, the ones of lesser fame or fortune. If they did not kill the Reapers themselves, they could still drive back armies of lesser creatures. Waves of husks had been meant to overrun missile batteries which had even the smallest chance of striking down a Reaper. But they found themselves met and matched by those for whom close combat had been the only way of fighting, and who had proven themselves in times when men had been far mightier than some careless enhancement could make the Reapers' empty slaves. Blade and spear and bow-string sang through the air, and all over the Earth armies of cybernetic abominations died to that song.  
  
Victory was not won that day. The Reapers were too numerous, too powerful to be so easily wiped out. The crushing pressure of history bore down on those out of their time, those whose legends had never said that they could return to life, and they were soon returned to the Throne. The bodies of the remaining champions ached with the strain of channelling the tidal waves of magic needed to break apart a single Reaper's shell, or to turn aside the sheer power of their great cannons. And even heroes must bleed. Must die.  
  
But this was at last a true battle. Inexorable conquest was halted, and the massacre on Earth was over. Humanity and its heroes now went to _war_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There be no author's note here! Instead, because I'm an attention seeking babbler, the giant morass of semi-coherent, semi-serious notes and mythological references has been made a separate chapter. Go look, if you're interested.


	2. Bonus Chapter 1: Britain (Extra Merlin ver.)

“Gawain, that one is yours. If I take the other on the right, then the centre is for -”  
  
But Merlin interrupts. “Arthur, a moment?”  
  
“Yes, Merlin?” He knows well enough that war is her business, and that time is precious in it. The interjection must be important.   
  
“I think the centre one can be mine,” he says. “Better to get as many of the bastards at once, right?”  
  
“I thought that you would be exhausted after our journey?” She thinks that she wouldn't have sounded so concerned in the past – wouldn't have _been_ so concerned, even for her mentor? - because in her mind nothing so human would have helped Britain. Accept it, use it, fight on. But now, thanks to so many things – the country lost, battles fought in dying dreams, even time in a realm where no-one but her was human – humanity is creeping through the cracks.  
  
“I am. But my apprentice has left something to help with that. Not the brightest, but I see he got it eventually.” Merlin sighs. “Boy could have managed it when I was still around and saved me some teaching time. Ungrateful brat.”  
  
She has a suspicion that the poor lad would have 'got it' earlier if Merlin had _actually_ spent as much time teaching him as he's implying.   
  
“He left something?” The ways of magi are mysterious, but she sees neither the apprentice, nor any gift of his anywhere around. Nor has she felt the traces of a magical working.  
  
“Here.” Merlin reaches out and the air ripples, making light refract and shift colours madly. He plunges his hand into the centre of the distortion and draws out a bright shape. At first brightness is all that Artoria can see of it amidst the twisting rainbows, until she realises that it causes as much of the prismatic chaos as whatever Merlin's doing to retrieve it. A shining crystal blade, scattering light everywhere.  
  
“Zelretch. The Jewel Sword.” Merlin snorts. “Arrogant bastard too. Naming everything after himself, who does he think he is? Didn't invent the damn magic, did he? And this damn well isn't a _sword_. Snotty little idiot ought to get into a real fight, then he'd learn what a sword is pretty quick.”   
  
He flicks his wrist, and the movement seems to travel into the dagger somehow, stretching the crystal until it has lengthened a couple of feet. “Better! Right, Arthur, let's get on with it. It's the future, and there's a whole new world of lasses I need to introduce myself to when this is done.”  
  
Artoria sighs. “Typical of you, mage. A millennium and a half of imprisonment, and you go straight back to your same ancient habits. A meddling, skirt-chasing, old man.”  
  
“And you wouldn't have it any other way, kid,” Merlin replies with a smile.   
  
Then he and Gawain and their king all turn to London as one. Their three blades gradually brighten to white fire, casting shadows from the city's buildings below. Then their light ceases growing, having built to its limit.  
  
The blades are swung, their power unleashed. Day brighter than day dawns over London, and the Reapers die.


	3. Bonus Chapter 2: Athens

Attika Conurbation  
  
In the ruins of the ancient Agora, dozens of Greek soldiers are fighting behind hasty barricades, as is their duty. They stare grimly at hordes of husks and cannibals and twisted Reaper mutations, and fire their shots into the face of death. Though all around them great buildings which used to overshadow this little piece of history have been torn down, they do not blink. They do not waver.  
  
They are also the minority, these proud and brave fighters. Most have fled from their posts; others have given up even that desperate attempt at escape and sit, waiting for their deaths.  
  
Alekos is one of these. He mumbles to himself, wishing, _wishing_ that this might be a bad dream: that he hadn't seen his apartment crushed by one of the metal titans descending from the sky, that he hadn't felt the rush of heat as a laser swept through his squad. Huddling himself into a tight corner, he does his best to block out the cracks of rifles, the bellowing horns of the Reapers and the screams of his fellow soldiers.  
  
Even an explosion in front of him doesn't persuade Alekos to raise his eyes. The man who caused it, however, isn't going to give him any choice. Alekos is grabbed by his shirt and hauled upright to stare in shock at his attacker.  
  
The first thing that springs to mind is banal, so _normal_ that it seems absurd when put against the world-ending battle raging around him.  
  
“Fuck, you're ugly.”  
  
And however dazed this sounds coming out of his mouth, Alekos means it. The man is halfway bald, his face is marked by deep lines, and he has a hugely prominent nose. His body seems starvation-thin, but his arms (which Alekos notices haven't begun trembling despite holding a heavy-set soldier in the air for a good half-minute now) are muscled absurdly out of proportion to the torso they're attached to.  
  
“Am I, young man? Well, by what standard would you determine beauty? Are you an expert in beauty, as a mason is an expert in stone, or shepherd an expert in sheep, or a general in strategy? Or do you claim to have some easy measure which all men can understand and agree on it, as one might find at a market for food? If you do, I beg that you enlighten me, for no man should go without such wondrous knowledge.” He sets Alekos down rather fastidiously, seeming to have accomplished whatever he wanted to do by picking him up. Or just distracted by the discussion.  
  
“Er … no? I'm a soldier, old guy. I kill things.” The reply, the whole conversation, is easier than it has any right to be. Enough so that Alekos is beginning to suspect it's a hallucination. In some ways, it's comforting to have a delusion to talk to, to distract him from everything else, no matter what that says about his state of mind.  
  
“Your profession is as a soldier? How interesting … but if you are not an expert in such things, as you say you are not, nor can you provide me with a measure, then how can you judge me ugly?”  
  
“... well, come on. It's freaking obvious, you gotta know you are.”  
  
The old man sighs. As with most such sighs from old men, it's incredibly patronising. “If it _is_ so obvious, surely you would be able to tell me why you think such a thing.” He tuts. “Now, let me offer a proposition, and then we shall see if we agree. Then our inquiry could proceed usefully. Is ugliness perhaps a degradation away from a normal human body? So you would say that a crooked nose is more ugly than a straight nose, or a broken arm more ugly than a whole one?”  
  
“Er, fine?”  
  
“Now you are surely jesting, good soldier. For we know that the poets have spoken on many occasions of great beauty, and they say without reservation that the most beautiful men and women were not merely more normal than others, but that it was some exceptional attribute of theirs. Do you think that Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships – so we are told – because she was merely more normal than the other women of Menelaos' palace? And, indeed, would not being 'more normal' disqualify you from normality as a matter of definition? No, no, I think you must be joking cruelly with an old man here. I beg that you indulge my age and speak seriously to me about this matter.”  
  
“Would you just _shut up_ for one second, coffin-dodger? For fuck's sake! Right, good. Now, mind telling me just who the hell you _are_?” Then, seeing him wind up for some new long-winded debate, Alekos has to interrupt again, “Dammit! No, don't answer that! Just tell me your _name_.”  
  
“Sokrates, of Alopeke of Antiokhis of Athens.” The old man looks smug. Maybe because the bastard managed to give a long answer to even the simplest of questions. Wait, hang on …  
  
“You're _Sokrates_? Talking about the old … places where you voted or whatever the shit that was, never fucking paid attention in History? What the _hell_? And just where did you spring from, dead philosopher-guy?”  
  
His bewilderment running its course, Alekos recollects himself and winces, noticing he's asked the madman more questions. But it seems his madness hasn't robbed him of a sense of the dramatic – he silently steps aside and points at a hole in the ground, from which he apparently burst forth. _Then_ he gets back to his endless nagging.  
  
“Where else could Sokrates be reborn, but Athens' agora?” He sniffs. “Even if you've not attended to its repair particularly well. Is this not the heart of our democracy? Is not this great market of Athens, with the Heroes standing for their tribes? The Pnyx is a place of futile argument, of political parties and of corruption – here is where we can all have true debate and where no man is above another. And yet look at it!”  
  
“You know that's not how it works any more, right? Things _have_ changed since you died.”  
  
“And, it seems, not for the better. By dog, young man, I am ashamed of our city, if this is how it treats its most remarkable invention! Would you disagree with he who said -”  
  
“Look, fuck this. If you shut up, I'll go shoot things. Then _you_ don't die again to these shitheads, and _I_ don't have my ears talked off by a _crazy dead guy who will not stop talking_!”  
  
Sokrates watches him go. _Suppose that went as well as could be expected. Athens needs her fighting men. I do wish he_ had _tried to reply, though. The youth in these modern times seem so bored by debate, it's quite shameful. Or does that quite fit the definition of 'shameful'? And how should we judge 'shame', in itself ..._  
  
(Sokrates isn't the best Heroic Spirit to be involved in a warzone. But his oblivious persistence is still somehow heartening in the face of monstrously advanced invaders from beyond the edges of the galaxy. That and the time when he ripped a husk in half with his bare hands. Without pausing in his examination of a captain's definition of 'command').

 

* * *

  
As Sokrates debates in the agora, one of the heroes whose statue stood there to mark Athens' respect for him is sailing towards the city. Aias the Great, prince of Salamis, stands huge and tall on the prow. The ship itself is that of another, famed for his actions in defence of Aias' kingdom: Themistokles, the great general and war-mage. And for all that hundreds of years divided them in history, they are thus of a kindred spirit, protectors of each other's lands.  
  
Themistokles has called a brutal wind to their sail, and even the magically-enhanced mast is creaking under the strain. But Aias has only eyes for the city ahead, the battle which must be won.  
  
The Reapers have eyes for him also. A flicker of attention from one of the Ascended standing over Athens, and it is catalogued. Primitive ship, crew which cannot be of a size to control it. Air pressure anomalies are centred on the vehicle. A camouflage, perhaps, for some desperate deployment of experimental technology. Yet, it is unlikely to be offensive in nature. Neither the apparent strength of the anomalies, nor similar situations in old Harvests indicate such. Generally, this should be an attempt to evacuate refugees. Desperate scientists and a crisis of conscience leading to early employment of unstable technology. It is not an issue.  
  
Still, caution is never unwarranted. As the ship comes close to docking, the Reaper shifts slightly. A brief pulse from a counter-missile laser is likely overkill for a wooden boat, but the Reapers have not survived the harvesting for millions of years by leaving things to chance.  
  
But Aias saw the shift, and it was _then_ that he invoked his shield. “Rho Aias!”  
  
The outer covering of bronze disappears, and beneath are the famed seven layers of ox-hide. They shimmer for a moment, and then unfurl, like the petals of a flower. Like petals, they seem delicate and even take on a pale shade of red as they stretch to make the full bloom.  
  
But they are the Seven Rings Covering The Fiery Heavens. No greater defence was there in the ancient Trojan War, not even the enchanted battlements of Ilion itself. In the hands of its master, the shield meets the Reaper laser and stops it dead, so easily that it seems contemptuous of all that the future has accomplished. There is no room for lasers and counter-evasion programs in its world of bronze, leather and magic.  
  
Untroubled, the ship comes close to land and both heroes leap out, Aias shouting as he does so.  
  
“Try again, boyo! See if you can do better this time!” The giant's booming voice echoes over the Piraean docks. Aias was second only to Achilles at Troy, and twice victor over Hektor. He craves a worthy battle, and his opponent seems to need a little encouragement to provide it.  
  
Themistokles has his own retaliation in store. As his comrade distracts the machine for him, he is calling on the land of Greece to help him as it did before. When it narrowed the pass at the Hot Gates, so that the Peloponnesians could stand off the Persians for days and grind away at their best. When it brought Salamis in closer to the mainland, so that the nimble ships and skilled seamen of Greece could overwhelm the clumsy invaders in narrow straits.  
  
And, naturally, Hellas responds. The ground shifts and quakes beneath the Reaper, then suddenly falls away. The Reaper tries to bring up its mass effect field, to fly free of the snare. But Themistokles does not let traps go unclosed, not even for such an unusual bird. Around the hole, the earth rises up in imitation of two enormous jaws. They close around the Reaper, crushing its shell as they do so. Its momentum halted, the Reaper is drawn inevitably down into the pit, to be swallowed and broken underneath the city it thought to conquer. The groaning of buckling metal is heard for a few seconds and then dies away into near-silence.  
  
“Hah! Not bad, mate, not bad!” Aias breaks it without a hint of reverence for the occasion, congratulating Themistokles with a broad smile and a hearty slap on the back. “Time to find another one, then. This time though, it's _my_ turn to kill it. Fair?”  
  
Themistokles is pale and sweating with the effort of his magecraft. He gasps out the reply. “Fair, lord Aias. Fair.”

 

* * *

  
On the other side of the Attic peninsula, another hero approaches from the sea. On a boiling wave, the son of Poseidon is carried towards his city. It was he who turned back the Amazon invaders, he who brought it democracy. And Theseus has no patience for any more pillagers or tyrants who think that they can harm _his_ Athens.  
  
As the wave approaches Athens, it keeps raising itself higher and higher. Beneath Theseus, a shape begins to emerge from it – a gigantic bull the size of a Reaper, one of Poseidon's treasured creatures. The sea-foam around its mouth seems to speak of madness, but Theseus imposes his will on it, crushing its unthinking rage with royal authority.  
  
“Come now, my prayers, my curses – Aras, heed your master's son! Your cause now is just, so obey my command!”  
  
The bull snorts and tosses its head, but takes on a sense of purpose, aiming its charge at one of the Reapers visible over the smoking buildings of Athens. As mount and rider strike land, the breadth of the wave is pulled in behind the charging bull, swept back like a cloak by the wind. Though Aras' sheer bulk and the earthquake-impact of its hooves make some damage inevitable, Theseus will not do the Reapers' work for them if ever he can help it. They will get not even a scrap of consolation in their deaths.  
  
His target reacts swiftly and violently. Its main cannon lines up on the divine curse Theseus has brought forth and sweeps across it. Molten metal tears through buildings and cuts Aras in half. A fog of vapour rises, and what can be seen of the bull behind it is halted in its charge, turned into a plunging waterfall. The wave-wake drops out of its careful shape, flooding the district as the will maintaining it is scattered.  
  
But the power of the gods and their children is not so easily foiled. The waters stop pouring down, and the bull's shape coalesces once more in a crouch. The fog clouds condense and the falling rain is drawn back into Aras, sealing its wound. Poseidon's bull stands tall again and its terrible roar shakes the whole city. The ocean's attack was interrupted for a few seconds, but the inexorable charge resumes.  
  
Aras' reformed cloak of tides now surges forward, slamming into the Reaper. Though it rocks unsteadily, the machine withstands that impact, but it was only the first strike. Coming just behind is Theseus and the wave-born bull. This time the Reaper is the one to fall, put off balance and then thrown to the ground by the second blow. Athens' king has no mercy for its besiegers, and his mount tramples the struggling machine again and again, crushing it with the weight of water until it is broken apart and moves no more.  
  
Neither ruinous Aras nor its ruler spares time to gloat, and they are immediately off again, setting the tides to scour away all the minions this alien sovereign has loosed in the city. Athens _will_ be free once more.


	4. Bonus Chapter 3: Orléans (Out Of Time)

There are thousands of them.  
  
Hundreds of husks, dead-eyed and groaning. Hundreds of cannibals, to keep soldiers' heads in cover as the children of the dragon's teeth shamble forward. Hundreds of the avian commanders, directing, controlling and improving the minions.  
  
And thousands upon thousands of refugees whom she has to protect.  
  
The battle of Orléans is already lost, a horde of Reaper slaves having overwhelmed the human army. What is left is a desperate retreat for the civilians. What is left is this one road away from the city, choked with crowds of innocents. Barricades have been put up to block as many side-streets as possible, manned by the few courageous soldiers who yet live. They pull the city's people through and shoot down any pursuing husks as best they can.  
  
But they cannot block the width of the road itself, nor are there enough of them to guard the barrier if they tried. So the Maid of Orléans stands there and soaks the street in blood, holding off the greatest part of the Reaper army by herself.  
  
Jeanne darts forward, knocking away the cannibals' bullet fire where she cannot avoid it, and hacks into the next group of husks. If strong, they are slow, dull and unarmed, the most pathetic foes she thinks she's ever had to fight. Quickly-judged blows, kept as short and neat as possible, take the heads from ten in as many seconds. Fast footwork moves her from one to the next, never off-balance or over-extended. She dispatches the last of them easily, and waits for the next wave of bullets to begin, or the next horde of ghouls to run forward. Inevitably, they come.  
  
It's almost … dull. Oppressively so. Her cuts are becoming that bit sloppier, her movement a little slower, because there is no _challenge_ here. An unending mass of grey flesh and blue glows, but nothing to stop her sword. She has no need to make feints, no need to anticipate trickery. They come at her and they die, and nothing about that has changed for the past two hours.  
  
She would actually prefer the _English_ of all enemies. They were crude and base, and even more so in a fight. They spat at her and cursed her and said she spread her legs for every soldier in the French army (then told her she'd be doing it for England's lads after the battle), but they _cared._ Not a one of this slave legion can even do that.  
  
And, of course, she could beat the English. Beat them at Patay, beat at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, and beat them _here_. She fought on the walls of Orléans, fought down the tower stairs, and fought through the streets to see the British gone and France's city free. Here, now, she can only make the defeat sting a little less.   
  
The thought makes her bare her teeth, and put some extra vigour into her strikes. An uppercut bisects one rotten husk, and a quick step to the side positions her for a downward slice, cutting the new victim straight from collarbone to opposite hip.  
  
But when the city was free of the English, there was no more beautiful sight. When the evening was falling, and the inevitable fires of siege were still burning, but the English had at last _gone_. When the townspeople all turned out to cheer their country's army on parade through the streets, marking the official reconquête. During the rebuilding, as everyone set to work with a will, so that France could say she had at last taken back a true city – and a determined declaration that they were keeping it, that all their effort wasn't just going to fall back into the hands _des goddams_. Later, when the city was clean and whole at last, with the front lines driven far away, and she could walk its streets and gardens without her sword, knowing that they'd been right. Orléans had been gifted by God to them and the English would never regain it.  
  
And now it is being conquered and burnt and defiled all over again. By worse tyrants than the Edwards or Henries of England could ever have been.  
  
She's jerked out of reminiscence by red glows from left and right. She's seen them before, these exploding husks, and should be able to get out of the way – but that unthinking lethargy is still on her, weighting her limbs, and the suicidal abominations detonate while she's still springing away. Propelled by the shockwave, she flies far faster and further than she'd meant, slamming back into a building at the side of the road.  
  
It's painful, but hardly debilitating, and she's back on her feet in a few seconds. Still … she _should_ have been able to dodge that, however bored and careless she'd become. What _is_ this, which weakens her arms and slows her legs by these deadly fractions? The magic of this time is feeble, and God's blessing has always kept the devil's sorcery from her, whatever its power.  
  
Her thoughts are not as clear as they should be, either, though that's surely a relic of the explosion. She shakes her head and throws herself back into the fight, trying to push the Reaper forces off the metres they had gained as she gathered herself. She swears by the angels that she will keep her focus – the empty slaves will get no closer to the innocents of Orléans.  
  
And, as outnumbered as she is, as stubbornly as her head refuses to clear, she manages it. The clean river-flow of killing cut to killing cut, made possible only by her enemies' lack of weapons or tactics, tears apart the Reaper front line. It's what every soldier hopes for: enemies unable and unwilling to parry, letting her just devote a single, efficient, lethal strike to each target. Unterhau into zornhau into mittelhau into oberhau, all the drills of her German tutors guiding her through an easy routine - no! It's that unengaged, mechanical state again, and she's got to keep ready. Whatever's going on, she has to resist.  
  
But it's the instant taken to berate herself which is key now. Not quite focused enough, she doesn't settle properly into her stance. And so, when the blue lightning comes, she's off-balance and stumbles instead of dodging. It burns its way up the armour on her right side, scorching metal, cloth and flesh alike before she falls out of its path.  
  
Getting up is a damned sight harder this time. She kept hold of her sword somehow, but when she tries to raise herself up on her right hand, she collapses back to ground with a barely bit-back scream of pain, and her spasming fingers throw it away. Grimly, she hauls herself with her left hand and shuffling knees through bloody husk-meat. Some show the clean cut of her blade, others the scorching of the same lightning which has thrown her down among them. She grasps her hilt with her working fingers and takes a second's rest, trying to push the agony into a distant corner of her mind.  
  
When she does stagger upright, clamping down on some viciously blasphemous oaths, she spots the source of her hurt. A floating, armoured, insectile _thing_ ; by far the largest of all the slaves she's yet seen. But its movement is slow, and it must take some time to reload, or else it would have finished her off where she lay. A siege weapon of sorts, she supposes. Even injured as she is, she's certainly more than a match for it in a head-on fight.  
  
She springs forward, sacrificing the subtle skill of the duellist for sheer speed. Bounding once, twice, she closes the distance immediately, and swings at a segmented leg, near a joint. Her blade bites deep, but not as deep as it should; she pulls back on it like a labourer's saw to sever the rest of the limb. A second slice scars the monster's side before it shrieks and drops suddenly to the ground. A bright blue glow surrounds it – a fact she has just enough time to take in before a hammer-blow of force throws her back and pulps all the husks surrounding the two of them.  
  
Struggling to her feet again, she _does_ swear this time, before mentally promising penance. But as frustrating as the damnable thing is, there's some good to be found in this. Whatever it did to throw her off has cleared away this latest group of the Reaper army, and she can take this new slave on herself without being distracted by the lesser ones slipping past.  
  
The glow around the siege-creature has faded but not disappeared completely, blue light limning its edges. Expecting to have to fall back from another pressure-pulse all the time, Jeanne advances. Its lightning flashes out again, but it sears only a dark mark into the street. Prepared this time, she was fast enough to evade in spite of her continuing clumsiness.  
  
Her spring carried her close in, and now she strikes. She expects her sword to pass through the light-armour, assuming it to be some variant on the 'shields' the modern soldiers had to protect themselves from enemy fire. “The slow blade penetrates the shield” was the axiom they quoted when she asked why she could so easily cut through the enemy if these defences could stop bullets. When it instead is repelled, she almost has to sigh with resignation. The soldiers were so caught off guard by both the invasion and her own appearance to aid them, perhaps it's no wonder their enemies have shielding abilities beyond their knowledge.   
  
Dodging a blow from one of the legs, she begins to harry the siege-insect, searching for some seam in its barrier which she can penetrate, always on the move to avoid lightning or its attempts to swat her with its limbs. She's just about got the measure of the weight on her body, and is giving herself time to spare for each movement, working in parries as well as dodges when she must. In fact, it's thanks to one of those forced parries that she brings the barrier down again. She times it perfectly, the sword positioned and angled to deflect the leg beyond her so she can lunge in. But as the length of it scrapes past her blade, the blue light flickers and dies, and the edge bites. All the force of its blow is suddenly working against it, and a great piece of armour-plate is sheered away.  
  
She follows up as quickly as possible, cutting right through the now-unarmoured leg and beginning to hack at its body again. She still has no good idea of its weak spots, but her general reasoning that stabbing deeply enough will hurt is proven to be correct. Again, blue swallows the hovering weapon and it slams down into the ground with a shrill scream. She thinks herself prepared enough, braced against against its invisible hammer, but is instead thrown off her feet once more. She tumbles along the street, swept along in the wave of force before being crushed against a wall.  
  
As she gets to her feet _again_ , wiping away blood from a cut above her eyes, the suspicion that had been hovering in the back of her mind at last comes forward. The weakness isn't temporary, or just some trick of monotony – it's getting worse all the while she stays here, no matter how she's tried to throw it off. And as to the _why_ … she's dead, or should be. Her ashes have long since been scattered and the Records certainly show that. She is an anomaly, an impossibility for time to bear down upon, and if the dreadful need of humanity kept that at bay for a little while, it must still submit to the universe itself.  
  
So, this new life will be short. This battle does not signify her entrance into the war, and there will be no new army to march behind her. All this is, is a last stand.  
  
So be it.  
  
An honourable death in battle, serving God and his people. It's better than she had the first time.   
  
She sets herself once more, coils like a spring, and leaps. She lands _atop_ the insect and begins slamming the point of her blade downward, hoping that sheer force will make up for not finding any vulnerability in the armour. Her unwilling steed twists and turns desperately, but she moves along with every shift, letting it add force to her sword's blows instead of throwing her.  
  
It takes longer again to break through its glowing defence. The drain on her strength is accelerating, and as she hacks at its head, she can only pray against the possibility that the Throne will recall her before her enemy is dead. Or, worse, the possibility that she should fade so far that she can no longer hinder the monster yet _not_ be recalled, and have to see it slay her countryfolk. To lie helpless, knowing how she failed.  
  
She screams denial to the world, and stabs down again. The splintered armour gives way, and her blade sinks deep at last. But the chink is small, and there's no room for the practiced twist and pull to take her blade back from flesh's sucking grasp. As the siege-insect screams and redoubles its bucking, all she can do is wrench the sword around, hoping to hit something vital, or worsen the damage at any rate.  
  
At last, it seems she must have. The screaming stops, and there's blessed stillness for a second. Then the beast _dissolves_ into blue ash, and Jeanne is unceremoniously dropped a dozen feet to the street. She lands hard on her back and, even through her armour, the breath is punched out of her.  
  
She gasps and hacks, trying to force air into her lungs. So weak, so _weak!_ But even while she chokes, she knows she can be content with what she's done, killing every slave that came against her. She could wish she were able to do more but, if she must settle for them, these few more hours of living breath have at least given her no new regrets. She fought with all her heart, and the fight was a good, Christian cause.  
  
Eventually, her lungs settle. In and out, in and out. Life's rhythm.  
  
But she hasn't a right to that any more, and it's draining away.  
  
Slower breaths, and slower again. Little by little.  
  
Her burnt left arm is seen to fade, flicker.  
  
Numbness spreads from the dead arm.  
  
Are those parts really numb?  
  
Are they still there at all?  
  
She flickers.  
  
She fades.  
  
She's gone.  


* * *

  
For an eternity of three hours, the Maid of Orleans fought without rest to hold the city's evacuation route, and her holy sword claimed five thousand slaves before her presence on Earth guttered out.   
  
In the tiny space of three hours, Jeanne D'Arc's courage and stubbornness saved forty thousand lives.


	5. Author's Notes, Mythological References, and 'Making Of' babble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My notes on these sorts of things get huge: it's a weakness, in that I can't stop myself going on about the details. Apparently, I've never bothered to suppress the urge to be that irritating little kid who jumps up and down pathetically trying to show off her supposed cleverness. So I've quarantined it all in this 'chapter'. :p

**Prologue**

'King In/Under the Mountain' is the typical name used for this kind of mythological construct.  
  
The 'Captain In His Hammock, A Thousand Mile Away' is from Henry Newbolt's poem on the legend of Drake's Drum and his potential return. Hear it read [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhLE9G8hfVY).  
  
Once and Future King is, of course, a translation from a line of Malory's: 'Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus' (more literally, if probably less powerfully, 'A king he was once, and a king he will be'.)  
  
Der Quintes kommt was supposedly a line said by parents to their children to frighten them, near one of the mountains said to be Charlemagne's resting place. “The Fifth comes”, since some German called Charlemagne Karl the Fifth.

 

* * *

 

**Ireland**

Fergus' relationship to Cú Chulainn is rather complex, being both his foster father and his blood uncle or adoptive uncle (depending on what _exact_ version of the myth you use for his birth), which is a bit weird. The word Cú Chulainn tends to use of him in my translation of the Táin is 'Comrade', but that sounded both a little off for the Fate/Stay Night version of him, and oddly Soviet-Russian. So it got cut.  
  
Gáe Bolg is indeed compared favourably to both Brionac and Gungnir. So I couldn't resist a little diversion on what happens to that comparison when Cú Chulainn goes all-out with his runes. (According to Nasu, he stands a chance of beating Herakles and his Twelve Labours resurrection spell if he utilises them. Which – if you interpret it to mean he can annihilate Herakles with one super-charged attack – means he could make something roughly on par with Excalibur. Cú Chulainn is _scary_.)  
  
The Mass Effect 3 Reapers are absolutely awful at keeping their barriers up whilst on the ground. I presume it's impractical, either because their mass renders the fine-tuning of shields to not repel the soil impossible, or for some other reason from the Codex I don't recall. In either case, this 'fic presumes that there _is_ a reason and that therefore it's “only” the tremendous strength of the Reapers' armour that has to be contended with.  
  
Caladbolg's wooden → real status is a reference both to its simply _peculiar_ appearance in the Fate series, and to the way that it was stolen from Fergus whilst he was sleeping with Queen Maeve (who, alas, was married at the time). To avoid massive loss of face, he carved a wooden sword to put in his scabbard. Caladbolg was returned to him in time for the final battle of the Táin Bó Cúilange, at which point he gives a few lines of verse naming it as Caladbolg - literally 'Hard-Blade' or 'Harsh-Blade' - as his father/Léte's sword, and as the Badb's swift messenger of doom.  
I shamelessly appropriated the intent of those lines, though 'of doom' felt too purple even for this 'fic. (The Badb is one of the aspects of the Old Irish goddess/goddess-triumvirate of war). Subsequently, he performs the famous feat of chopping the tops off three hills – the version found in the Book of Leinster says that this happened because Caladbolg could become the size of a rainbow whenever he swung it. Frankly, I again thought that was a _tad_ over the top (in general, I think the Irish writers don't handle going OTT so well as, for example, Greek mythographers, though I'm surely biased. And goodness knows that the Greeks got it wrong too – witness the Shield of Herakles). And whilst I was prepared to give some extra power to the sword for not being a version traced by Archer, I wasn't going to go that far. Still, I got a reference to it in, as (I think) a reasonable consequence of the spacial distortions it creates.

 

* * *

 

**Britain**

I have placed the Knights' sleeping place on Anglesey, in one of the many Welsh places named Ogof Arthur/ “Arthur's Cave”. In the spirit of the Nasuverse, lots of elements are stolen from many other cave legends concerning Arthur, though the inclusion of the Round Table is was my own idea (I don't dare call it an invention, because I'm certain it's not).  
  
Ynys Enlli ('Island in the Tides') is indeed fortunate enough to have a suitably mythical name for me to translate. Ditto its unique brand of apple tree, although cuttings have begun to be distributed to try and build up the strain. A cave on the hillside above the mother tree is legendarily Merlin's prison (as are hundreds of others around the British Isles, of course, just as many caves throughout the world are where dead kings sleep. Sometimes, the same cave will host both legends, because why not?). This neatly ties in to Avalon's association with apples; which is most easily summarised by telling you to look at [part of Avalon's Wiki page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon#Etymology).  
  
The entire staff-making sequence came from me noticing that Merlin had an unexplained staff in later scenes. I think its insertion is just awkward enough that you can tell, but I liked the idea of him taking a kind of revenge on his coffin enough that I kept it.  
  
Derfel is a historical figure – a saint who probably ministered around the Llandderfel area. He is also entangled in Welsh Arthurian myth, although we have lost most of his parts of the tale. He is named as Derfel Cadarn – the Mighty – and in some traditions one of the seven knights to have survived Camlann, by virtue of his strength. Most famously in modern times, Bernard Cornwell (author of Sharpe and others) uses him as the protagonist in his interpretation of the Arthur myth: the connection to Merlin is drawn from there, though the connection to Bardsey/Ynys Enlli (and therefore one of the many places Merlin is supposed to rest) is not – he is one of the 20,000 saints supposedly buried there; he may have been an abbot at a monastery on the island; additionally the monastery's founder and first abbot, St. Cadfan, is supposed to have been his cousin.  
  
Merlin's place as the Magician of the Second is my own conjecture, derived from all the future-based magecraft he seems to do. It's more than a little iffy, since Merlin seems to still be at least partly alive in Nasu canon, and Zelretch is nevertheless running around (and it seems to be the case that there's only one Magic-user at a time). I'm claiming both that Merlin doesn't count as a Magician whilst he's confined and unable to use the Second, and that I have authorial fiat. :p  
(Whilst we're at it, Teleportation is part of _some_ Magic, but it's also not certain to be the Second. I kinda think it makes sense, given how much the Second fits into movement and travel, but it's arguable. For the sake of cleaving to canon, I used a work-around rather than direct teleportation. Seems plausible that you'd get to choose where you popped out in a parallel world, since it'd be a right pain in the backside otherwise.)  
  
I got fed up enough with everyone's variant spellings on Llenlleawg that I just went to some online pictures of the Culhwch and Owen manuscripts (both the Red Book of Hengest and the White Book of Rhydderch – thanks to the National Library of Wales and our own Jesus College for having those images open) and checked through to have a look at the direct source. Such fun, given that w was inconsistently written as something resembling a 6, final g as c and the fact I _don't speak Welsh,_ let alone badly transmitted, mediaeval Welsh in cramped, stylised handwriting. Well, I tracked it down anyway.  
  
In Culhwch and Owen, Llenlleawg grabs Arthur's sword, swings it once and kills all their opponents during the retrieval of Diwrnach's Cauldron. He seems to be an Irishman like Diwrnach, which is pretty interesting. Overall, a neat little character, more than a little obscure and bound up in the multi-kill aspect with the Nasuverse has kept with Excalibur. So he got included and (given the strictly individual functioning of Noble Phantasms) turned out to be a middle finger to Nasu's decision that Shirō can't project that sword.  
  
Artoria has, of course, ended up in Trafalgar Square by Nelson's Column. Because why not?

 

* * *

 

 **Iraq**  
  
السماوة /Samawah is the closest city to the site of Uruk. It's not huge, and even by the time of Mass Effect, I doubt it'd be a priority target for the Reapers (frankly, I rather preferred it when we had a single, terrifying, semi-omniscient Reaper antagonist – the thousands that seem to descend on Earth and the other planets rather cheapen the whole effect for me, and ME2's ending cutscene was something of a shock to the system, a devaluing of the previously remarkable Reaper presence. But that's a whole separate discussion). In any case, it seemed necessary to give a nod to Gilgamesh's city here, so it still turns up.  
  
The ancient, semi-divine, pagan hero defeats the passengers of a distorted Noah's ark. How very symbolic. (Decide for yourself what the subtext is, because _I_ never decided to turn it into that and have no idea what it means).  
  
I don't like Gilgamesh's position as the 'first hero' in the Nasuverse, myself. Actually once made a sheet for Enmerkar, his quasi-grandfather whose legend can't reliably be dated to later than Gilgamesh (AFAIK). And used that as an excuse to incorporate the hax from Enmerkar's legend, creating a Heroic Spirit who probably outdid Gilgamesh. But it's canon, so whatever.  
  
Nasu's Ea simulates an un-named, unspecific cutting tool from the Song of Ulikummi which once divided Heaven and Earth. It is unsealed from the vaults of the 'Former Gods' (Elder Gods here because I can, because I'd argue it's a more fluid translation since the adjective is also applied to the evidently still-existent tool itself, and because Cthulhu's kinda canon for the Nasuverse anyway). I'm using Hans Gustav Güterbock's Hittite text and translation, and would tend to agree with his assumption that the tool in question should be understood as a saw, for his reasons and my own. Nasu's gone for a drill-sword, perhaps noting that the tool should cut stone, perhaps just liking the aesthetic. In any case, a drill-sword he made it, and a drill-sword it is in this 'fic.  
  
Gilgamesh has an interesting interaction with machines. He's an odd Heroic Spirit, insofar as his Noble Phantasms are all very unconventional. Enkidu is probably closest to him mythically, but isn't actually listed for him; Ea is un-named and therefore not a proper Noble Phantasm by definition; the Gate of Babylon only accesses un-named prototype weapons. It's been much discussed that Gilgamesh is an 'owner' instead of a 'user' – he isn't particularly proficient with any of the Noble Phantasms in his vault, so he's somewhat reliant on their age and power and the number of them instead of pure skill in wielding them. If he only had proto-Gáe Bolg and you put him up against Cú Chulainn, Lancer would make far better use of it and probably win. Anyway, the point is that this all leads into my Gilgamesh being particularly disdainful when he sees that the invasion _is_ in fact being orchestrated by machines – what should be tools. Most heroes have a great pride in their weapons and would be more accepting of machines as separate entities (at least so long as the machines weren't trying to kill them). Gilgamesh is much less sentimental in that respect and is offended that mere tools should think to destroy people. (Mind, he talks enough to Ea that you start to suspect it's semi-sentient itself).  
  
The Earth-before-Earth seen in the full-power EA of Hollow Ataraxia is depressingly (deliberately?) contradictory. It's a place of non-existence, but has ... well, for a start, it has any other attributes at all. It's a realm of the dead, it has hot and cold. It's Hell, an underworld (with some specific traits that make me think of the Narakas and the Pretaloka), but it's also the planet before Heaven and Earth were split. Whether my attempted reconciliation really worked is, I suppose, up to the reader.  
  
Delving into the signifiance of 'Origin' within the Nasuverse for the Mass Effect readers, or less obsessive Nasuverse-ites, would take rather a long time and be out-of-place. It's not necessary that you understand it for the story anyway, but a simplified explanation here might add a little something. The Nasuverse works on a reincarnation system (and heroes such as we see in these stories are defined by being remarkable enough to have been removed from the cycle). Origin encompasses the soul, and all the experiences etched into it over every previous incarnation of yourself. It works out to a drive, a motive force that shapes your behaviour (vastly more so if you become aware of it and have it 'awakened'). Not only sentient existences have souls: Lio Shirazumi's previous incarnations were all carnivorous animals and his drive is thus 'consumption'. Resultantly, our existence-loathing, pre-Earth Hell is just as disgusted with the Reapers as it would be with biological life.

 

* * *

 

 **Bonus Chapter 1**  
This idea was part of my first draft of how the Arthur part would go. I cut it for a number of reasons. One was that I wanted this to stand a bit apart from the rest of the Nasuverse. It was _meant_ to only require Alaya's existence (in comparison to a very different and more involved version I'm writing where only Gaia exists), though all the fairy ties and the use of mana in magic somewhat scuppered that. In any case, I still wanted to keep most everything else out or at _least_ out-of-focus, and Zelretch connects to a _lot_ of the rest of the Nasuverse. Following on from that, if a Nasuverse concept/character isn't in or absolutely necessitated by the 'fic, please assume they don't exist in this AU. For neatness' sake, if nothing else.  
  
I also was iffy on having multiple users of a magic floating around, and had to admit that whilst the evidence for Merlin and the Second was _there_ , it also wasn't definitive. I therefore felt more comfortable keeping it to the one use than drawing all the attention to it that I did here.

 

* * *

 

**Bonus Chapter 2**

Starting off with one of the heroes who _isn't_ going to be taking on Reapers any time soon. Told you they existed. :p  
  
This is a bonus chapter not because it got cut in favour of an idea I preferred, but because it's immeasurably self-indulgent. As a classicist, I tend to make up Servants from Ancient Greece, and this is me deploying some of them.  
  
Read the Constitution of the Athenians (Aristotle) if you want to understand what Sokrates precisely is listing off. In quick summary, they are his village/constituency – Alopeke being big enough to count for both – and his tribe, made up of the people from two other constituencies joined with his. One of the important points in democratic Athens was that you were part of a voting group which bound the disparate communities of Attika together instead of using a patronymic for a secondary identifier. (Though this was not always followed – you might compare it to the use of 'comrade' in Soviet Russia, or something).  
  
Yeah, Sokrates is being more than a bit of a troll. Read enough of the Socratic dialogues and you might come to that conclusion too.  
  
The Pnyx was where the Assembly of Athens actually met, though the agora was used as a speaking platform for people when the Assembly wasn't in session (or they didn't think they'd get a good chance to speak in the Assembly). It also hosted the statues of the ten Eponymous Heroes, for whom the tribes were named. And you're about to meet one of them.  
  
'By dog' is a not infrequent exclamation of Sokrates (though 'By Zeus' crops up as well). He was making bad puns in a language that was more than a thousand years away. Because troll, I guess.  
  
Typically, you'd find Salaminian/Telamonian Aias is actually going to be called 'the Greater', because it helps distinguish him from the Lokrian/Oilean Aias, an inferior warrior who is explicitly named as 'the lesser' by Homer when the two are being compared. IIRC, Aias never actually get called 'greater' in the exchange. However, he does sometimes get called the Great (e.g. Λ 591, Ρ 715), and I like evoking both the in-story epithet and the scholarly/extra-narrative one.  
  
“My prayers, my ruin – Aras” would all be one word in the Ancient Greek Theseus is actually speaking here: Ἀρας. But you are likely ill-educated scum, who wouldn't recognise Euripides' clever double-meaning across dialects of classical Greek, so I am forced to translate it twice and add _another_ word so you actually get the sound as well. *sigh* :p

 

* * *

 

 **Bonus Chapter 3**  
  
Anyone daring to read Orléans with that bastardised, clumsy American pronunciation, out loud or in their heads, will be summarily hacked to death. :p  
  
Unfortunately, my broadsword training was mostly based on Lichtenauer, with some of the other German and Italian schools thrown in. I have no idea how the French might have referred to the strikes, or even if they would have translated them from German. Or much of the actual mediaeval background of the transmission and teaching of broadsword techniques at all, for that matter. So this Jeanne was taught by Germans when she proved herself a general and needed some sword skill. (In reality, I believe Jeanne is supposed only to have commanded and not to have killed any enemy combatants, but that's not very useful for this kind of 'fic, nor does it explain why her Noble Phantasm manifests as a sword. Happily, the recent Type Moon Ace preview shows that Nasuverse Jeanne did use a sword and did go to battle, so I can set my mind at ease there).


	6. Humanity's Prayer - Alaya (Deprecated: Ignore)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the old version, where I was breaking it up into chapters instead of trying for a one-shot. I kept it around to preserve people's comments, because it felt discourteous to remove those without people asking. Otherwise, there's nothing new here, and you can safely ignore it.

Humanity is, to all intents and purposes, a rather unspectacular strain of life. They do not think as quickly as the salarians, nor do they acquire the long-lived wisdom of the asari. They have none of the durability of turians, the krogan or the vorcha. Any batarian or elcor can crush a human's skull with a blow. Their memory is astoundingly inferior to that of the drell, and they cannot match the beautiful bioluminescence of the hanar. Frankly, humans aren't good for much. Middle of the road in almost every way, never visibly excelling.

A scientist, if called upon to show some enthusiasm for the humans, will likely babble on about their extraordinary genetic diversity. And it's true that humans come in a rather incredible array of colours, palest white to midnight black, that their eyes have dozens of shades to them, even that they are extraordinarily varied in their sexualities compared to other species. But this (though it skims the truth for an instant as a stone skips over water) is a detail, a curiosity. Humanity's variety would not make up for its weakness, and we must plunge further on.

If you ask some average person, wandering the Wards, they are actually more likely to pick up on their hair. Uncovered hair on an intelligent species is rather a novelty to the longer-established civilisations, and the wonder has still not worn off. Partners to aliens are known to have been trapped for hours with a lover who simply strokes and strokes their hair, learning colour, texture, length. (Amongst other things, this means hair is beginning to become symbol of romantic interest, inside and outside human space. Show yours off and fling it about to show that you're available; brush theirs with a hand to show you'd like to take up the offer).

A historian might perhaps get closer to the truth. Humanity, it will be noted, have expanded far more rapidly than any other recorded civilisation. They were pressed into battle on their very first contact with an alien species (and for all that the Hierachy records it as an 'Incident', the idea of the 'First Contact _War_ ' is far more pervasive in historical and popular discussion). They went up against the _turian_ military machine – even a small part of it – and came out of it with a creditable draw. They made outstanding contributions to tactics, to new ship designs. They have won themselves a seat on the Council more quickly than anyone thought possible.

But the facts of history will not tell you the truth. At least, not all of it. Humanity has been vastly more successful than it has any right to be, but that does not get at the _why_ of it, not the root. There is an extraordinary _drive_ there. Krogans are bloody-minded to be sure (and can afford to be, even as more and more are born without full redundant systems), but they lack _purpose_ in their stubborn nature. For that reason, they die the genophage's slow and lingering death, not only as their numbers dwindle with each warrior dead and each stillborn clutch, but also as they degrade themselves into feuding brutes. Brutes who forget the glory of their ancestors and will not stoop to curing their species' quiet death even as they rage about it to all who would hear.

And so the utter determination of humanity gives them something no other species has. Something no species has ever had, according to the thousand cycle-long data banks of the Eldest, ancient Harbinger. It gives them Alaya. The great unconscious embodiment of human _will_. Alaya processes the belief and conviction of humanity. It shapes the gods. It elevates legends to be recorded in the Root, the Spiral of Origin, Void, 「」, siari, the fabric of the universe itself, whatever word or symbol or phrase you try to dedicate to that enormous, inexpressible concept.

But the gods left two thousand years ago, with all the other beasts of fantasy and legend, leaving humans to their Age of Man, the age of Technology. Scraps of their presence remain – an old sword, handed down through the clan's generations; the religions who were too stubborn to die when their heads were cut off and their feet shattered; a few families in which the bloodline was preserved and who are stronger or quicker than humans really should be (this, O learned scientist, even if you will get no proof, is where humanity's genetic diversity comes from – the inhuman constructs of human faith). Yet, they are only scraps. The gods have no place in the normal life of humanity any more, and humanity dwindles, invention after invention compensating as godsblood thins and the old, testing wilds are tamed.

Alaya's role, then, is more subtle in this day and age. The gods are gone and humanity relies too much on technology over personal strength for people to ever become true legends again. Occasionally, it will draw the attention of ancient heroes, the great unconscious calling the past to defend the present. But mostly it is nudges in the mind and manipulations and shadows, not the blowing horns of battle.

The time for that subtlety is past now. Humanity is under threat as never before. _Alaya_ is under threat. For all that humans have made a hundred other planets homes, Earth is still the homeworld, the centre of its self-identity. If it were to fall … Alaya might not survive. Insofar as an extension of unconsciousness can be afraid, it is _terrified_. It is not a screaming panic – that is the realm of the waking mind – but all those uncontrolled signs of fear. A trembling in the hands, a shivering, a pacing to-and-fro. All multiplied eight billion times over as the Reaper horns shake the land and their crimson streams of metal carelessly gut humanity's ships.

It _might_ be stopped. A faint hope, but there, a single shooting star upon which all Earth's children can wish. As the Reapers' initial attack brings panic and terror, people falls back on the old superstitions and traditions. They grasp at straws, but that is enough. The King Under The Mountain. The Captain In His Hammock, A Thousand Mile Away. The Once And Future King. A hundred million despairing prayers soar, filled with belief. And the desperate sincerity is itself what means those prayers can be answered.

Their contracts are answered. Their vows fulfilled. Their legends reborn.

Charlemagne walks out of the cave in Odin's Mountain. He is in his prime, golden hair flowing down his shoulders, and the golden sword Joyeuse at his side.

Barbarossa stands tall again, brushing burial-earth away from massive shoulders and bright red beard. The Holy Roman Empire is no more, but its Emperors rise once again.

As a distant drumbeat sounds, by Plymouth a massive fleet of galleons rises out of the water, and the _Golden Hind_ is at their head.

At the third cry of their horn, the cave entrance cracks open at last. First to march out is Fionn, old Ireland's saviour. And behind him are assembled the Fianna - Diarmuid and Oisin and Oengus and all the others - ready to protect the Emerald Isle once more.

Deep within the corridors of Kronborg Castle, the old statue shudders and then seems to fill with colour and texture and life until King Holger the Dane stands tall once more. And in his hand is Curtana, sister to Joyeuse and Durandal.

Near Athens, Theseus strides from the sea, his father's ancient kingdom. Just as at Marathon he came forth to sweep the Persians before him and the army of his countrymen, so he has returned again for his city's sake.

And though he never died, the call sounds loudly to another too. From the faery realms steps the healed Arthur, ageless ever since he took the scabbard of Excalibur, and so young that he seems a maiden girl at first sight.

But it is not only these legends who are realised now. Alaya's plea has no hold on them save the common bond of humanity, but few indeed are the heroes who would abandon their species, their planet, or a damned good fight. The path to the Throne of Heroes has been forced wide open, and the best that Earth has ever had to offer comes pouring out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Various things belong to various people. EA and BioWare get Mass Effect and various associated concepts; Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon get Fate/Stay Night and other concepts. World mythology belongs to nobody, and sod you all if you want to take it away. I get most of the actual writing, but that's pretty worthless when other people own so much of what underpins it (and I owe them a debt for that).
> 
> 'King In/Under the Mountain' is the typical name used for this kind of mythological construct. 
> 
> The 'Captain In His Hammock, A Thousand Mile Away' is from Henry Newbolt's poem on the legend of Drake's Drum and his potential return.
> 
> Once and Future King is, of course, a translation from a line of Malory's: 'Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus' (more literally, if probably less powerfully, 'A king he was once, and a king he will be'.)
> 
> Der Quintes kommt was supposedly a line said by parents to their children to frighten them, near Odin's Mountain (one of the various mountains said to be Charlemagne's resting place - being folklore, you will notice that there are *many* interpretations and locations for the legends involved here). “The Fifth comes”, since some Germans called Charlemagne Karl the Fifth.


	7. Ulster - Cú Chulainn and Fergus mac Roích (Deprecated: Ignore)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the old version, where I was breaking it up into chapters instead of trying for a one-shot. I kept it around to preserve people's comments, because it felt discourteous to remove those without asking. Otherwise, there's nothing new here, and you can safely ignore it.

So it is that Cú Chulainn and his old comrade meet once again on Ulster's green plains, a little way outside Belfast's sprawl. Fergus mac Roích offers his nephew a fierce smile, and has it returned with added bloodlust. Then, in sync with each other as only family or warriors who have depended on each other in battle's crush can be – and these two fit both categories – they turn to watch the four monstrous machines stalking over the city.

“Big buggers,” is Fergus' deliberately unimpressed observation.

“That they are.” Culann's Hound is less practised at feigning diffidence, and his eagerness to see how well the metal constructs will _die_ seeps through. Fergus's smile broadens for a second, amused at the constancy of his relative's willingness for battle. “And I'm taking first shot at them.”

“Your spear's good, kid. It's not _that_ good.” Fergus would back his foster-son against thousands of men – has _seen_ him live up to those expectations, but these invaders require more than skill and strength. “Not reckoning they've got hearts for you to destroy. Your witch's tricks aren't so helpful against these bloody things.”

“Maybe so, maybe so.” Prideful little bastard. The boy obviously has something up his sleeve, and he's enjoying defying Fergus' expectations. “But my spear _and_ the old runes I learnt from the witch? That'll do it.”

Fergus frowns. He's had his own army held back by those runes before, and the spear's not to be underestimated but still …

Cú Chulainn is entirely unbothered by his uncle's silence and is already scratching runes into the ground. He has speed born of practice, learned under the harsh tutelage as a boy in the Land of Shadows and refined in Ireland's constant raids. Two circles of runestones now surround them. The tight inner one is complete, eighteen markings already drawing in power to feed his spear. The outer one is missing its last, held in his hand for the necessary moment.

“This is going to take some power, Fergus. Watch 'em for me.”

Fergus nods and turns his gaze towards the colossi wreaking havoc in Belfast. Even if his nephew's likely over-reaching himself, he's not going to insult him by interfering. Family and warriors together – the code is clear. Neither of them would so pain the other's pride.

Cú Chulainn eyes the inner circle with an unusually considered glance, waits a few seconds longer, and _leaps_. Thirty feet he jumps into the air, spear held ready to throw. And as he rises, the runes begin to shine. From the first, directly facing the sun, and then around the circle as the sun would travel. Dipping down into the west, circling through south and rising again in the east until it reaches the first stone in the north. When each lights, it sends a streamer of white into the air, spiralling upwards and curling around Cú Chulainn's red spear until it seems that he has not leapt, but merely stands on a tree made from light. And in his hand he holds not a lance, but a ray of the sun itself.

And then Ireland's Son of Light lets his missile fly.

Like light it seems, and like light it travels. In half an instant, it has torn through the air and slammed into a Reaper. Magic and ancient power contend with high-density steel compounds and metals never known to humanity. The gods' spears could not break it: not Lugh's Brionac, called the Five Thundering Stars, nor Odin's Gungnir, called the Declaration Of The Elder God.

But the immortals gods have run to the hidden places of the world. Men, dying but always changing and adapting and bettering themselves, remain. And Cú Chulainn has bettered the gods with his spear.

It tears through the Reaper, leaving a gaping hole in it as if a giant fist had smashed through the Old Machine. The metal corpse remains upright for a few seconds, until power to its legs gives out and it falls like a landslide. So dies the first Reaper on Earth, to a spear and to a system of writing that had made do with stone because its civilisation had not yet created paper.

For a split second, all is still, in recognition of this insanity (though it is a powerful madness, which all men create and which possesses all men). For a mortal army, the shattering of invulnerability would have caused a much longer pause, perhaps even a rout. But the Old Machines have no use for morale. It is a weakness of the Unascended, to be used and broken mercilessly, but it is not _theirs._ So a shift, a slight glow from one of the remaining monsters is all the warning Fergus gets.

“ 'Ware!” he barks and his nephew, even as he falls back to earth, flicks the final runestone into its place. The Reaper's crimson blast is held back by an invisible barrier, wasting itself on thin air. But even Cú Chulainn's mastery of runes is challenged by the alien power. His carved stones glowed at first, but now they blaze like white fire.

And then one cracks, its light flickering.

“Shit!” Fergus grabs his panting foster-son and dives to the side, just before scarlet metal carves through the bounded field, through the space where they had stood, and through the landscape behind them, painting the fields with a white scar of slag, quickly cooling to black.

The Reapers turn away again, having to give their attention to the renewed series of attacks within Belfast, perhaps inspired by the first giant's fall. All those who Ascended into processes of each machine Nation concur that even in the vastly improbable event that the two survived, they must have been unable to carry away a weapon of the necessary mass to reproduce that anomaly. Even conceding the absurd possibility that millions upon millions of years of science can be surpassed by primates who have discovered _writing_ barely five thousand years ago, priority must be given to the city's attacks. They are certain to cause damage – the two unknown figures should not even be alive.

The Irishmen untangle themselves from each other quickly. Lives of war ensure that – even when battle knocks you down hard, you stand back up. For pride's sake, and for the sake of not getting stabbed in the throat whilst you're helpless. A quick glance confirms that the Reapers' threat to them is gone … for a time.

“Well then, Hound,” Fergus says. “You had your turn – mine now.” He is slower to rouse than his son, but his warlust is no less fierce for that. He reaches down to his side and draws his sword from its scabbard. It seems large, even for Fergus, and clumsily proportioned. Worse yet, it is made of wood, soft and pale. No-one could believe that this was a hero's blade.

“My core is twisted into madness!” So proclaims Fergus, and the wood falls away to show the true sword. It is his father's – Léte's Sword. It is his goddess' – the Badb's Swift Messenger. It is the Harshblade. It is Caladbolg. A spiral of sharp-edged steel, still oddly shaped but now seeming to _fit_ with Fergus.

Cú Chulainn frowns for a second. “I've seen that. Not just when I was alive, with you, but since I came to the Throne. But … I haven't seen _you_.” His questioning tone (made more hesitant as he struggles to match up the half-memories one acquires in the Throne's space, kept outside of time's reach) is well warranted. No hero could make proper use of another's treasure – it is only by taking and making it your own that you become worthy of immortality in the Throne of Heroes – and only one such could have met and battled Cú Chulainn.

Fergus snorts and dismisses the riddle. “It's time to remind you of the real bloody thing then! Last time you saw _me_ with this blade, I gave the Máela Midi their names – the three Scalped Hills of Meath.” The bared-teeth grin is back, full of blood-lust. “And I'm reckoning these bastards are smaller than they were.”

Fergus crosses his right hand over his body, so that Caladbolg points out to his left. Then he snaps it around in a half-circle until his arm is straightened out to the right. The sword's tip traces a line in the air which distorts all the light that passes through it, breaking it into prismatic shards of colour – a rainbow in miniature.

Then, “Caladbolg!” The line rushes outward, racing towards the skyline of Belfast, racing towards the Reapers that stand over it. And it hits.

Before, it was a war of power: kinetic energy matched against the toughness of armour. The Spiral Sword is not so straight-forward. It twists space without regard for what it holds within it – in the past, it tore apart men and shields and weapons and land all the same. Now it rends the Reapers, warping their armour, crushing their shells, tearing their insides. The Reapers can face power – have seen desperate Unascended build futile weapons which harnessed immense and absurd amounts of energy, beyond even what the Reapers employed. And the nations who Ascended from those children recall creating such things in fear and ignorance before enlightenment came to them. But this is _concept_ , imposition of the abstract onto reality. It is something against which the Old Machines have no defence.

Two sounds ring out over Belfast, jarring painfully against one another. The first is the deep horns of the Reapers, far louder than before, as if they at last remember panic. Or death. The second is much higher – the wrenching sound of metal twisted beyond its limits and torn apart. A Reaper falls; the distortion has cut straight through its core and nothing remains of the old nation who inhabited the great mechanical war-shell. A second collapses; its core had been missed, but its power was gone, and so an accord of millions fell silent. The third stays – it too has been shorn in two, but its core is whole, and enough systems remain intact. Not to survive – it too will be lost within the minute – but to relay a desperate message to its kin. _Humanity brings an unknown power against the Ascended. Beware, beware!_ The signal cycles out once, and has to let a painful lapse of seconds pass: that is the limit without instantly annihilating the cooling systems or overwhelming the transmitters. The second cycle at last goes. Then the third nation slumps, falls into the dust of its unconquered city and dies.

But the Reapers elsewhere are already finding out that humanity has surprises for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fergus' relationship to Cú Chulainn is rather complex, being both his foster father and his blood uncle or adoptive uncle (depending on what exact version of the myth you use for his birth), which is a bit weird. The word Cú Chulainn tends to use of him in my translation of the Táin is 'Comrade', but that sounded both a little off for the Fate/Stay Night version of him, and oddly Soviet-Russian. So it got cut.
> 
> Gáe Bolg is indeed compared favourably to both Brionac and Gungnir. So I couldn't resist a little diversion on what happens to that comparison when Cú Chulainn goes all-out with his runes. (According to Nasu, he stands a chance of beating Herakles and his Twelve Labours resurrection spell if he utilises them. Which – if you interpret it to mean he can annihilate Herakles with one super-charged attack – means he could make something roughly on par with Excalibur. Cú Chulainn is scary.)
> 
> The Mass Effect 3 Reapers are absolutely awful at keeping their barriers up whilst on the ground. I presume it's impractical, either because their mass renders the fine-tuning of shields to not repel the soil impossible, or for some other reason from the Codex I don't recall. In either case, this 'fic presumes that there is a reason and that therefore it's “only” the tremendous strength of the Reapers' armour that has to be contended with.
> 
> Caladbolg's wooden → real status is a reference both to its simply peculiar appearance in the Fate series, and to the way that it was stolen from Fergus whilst he was sleeping with Queen Maeve (who, alas, was married at the time). To avoid massive loss of face, he carved a wooden sword to put in his scabbard. Caladbolg was returned to him in time for the final battle of the Táin Bó Cúilange, at which point he gives a few lines of verse naming it as Caladbolg - literally 'Hard-Blade' or 'Harsh-Blade' - as his father/Léte's sword, and as the Badb's swift messenger of doom.  
> I shamelessly appropriated the intent of those lines, though 'of doom' felt too purple even for this 'fic. (The Badb is one of the aspects of the Old Irish goddess/goddess-triumvirate of war). Subsequently, he performs the famous feat of chopping the tops off three hills – the version found in the Book of Leinster says that this happened because Caladbolg could become the size of a rainbow whenever he swung it. Frankly, I again thought that was a tad over the top (in general, I think the Irish writers don't handle going OTT so well as, for example, Greek mythographers, though I'm surely biased. And goodness knows that the Greeks got it wrong too – witness the Shield of Herakles). And whilst I was prepared to give some extra power to the sword for not being a version traced by Archer, I wasn't going to go that far. Still, I got a reference to it in, as (I think) a reasonable consequence of the spacial distortions it creates.


End file.
